| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: will show how all popular revolutions resemble each other. Catherine's
subsequent policy, which upheld so firmly the royal power, may well
have been instigated in part by such scenes, of which an Italian girl
of nine years of age was assuredly not ignorant.
The rise of Alessandro de' Medici, to which the bastard Pope Clement
VII. powerfully contributed, was no doubt chiefly caused by the
affection of Charles V. for his famous illegitimate daughter Margaret.
Thus Pope and emperor were prompted by the same sentiment. At this
epoch Venice had the commerce of the world; Rome had its moral
government; Italy still reigned supreme through the poets, the
generals, the statesmen born to her. At no period of the world's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: to rob the horse of opportunity for vice.[5]
[4] Cf. "Econ." xi. 18; Aristoph. "Clouds," 32.
[5] Or, "prevents the horse from carrying out vicious designs."
Again, care should be taken to tie the horse up with the halter above
his head. A horse's natural instinct, in trying to rid himself of
anything that irritates the face, is to toss up his head, and by this
upward movement, if so tied, he only slackens the chain instead of
snapping it. In rubbing the horse down, the groom should begin with
the head and mane; as until the upper parts are clean, it is vain to
cleanse the lower; then, as regards the rest of the body, first brush
up the hair, by help of all the ordinary implements for cleansing, and
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: undertaking, when he heard two shots fired to his right. The
solid mass of black bodies and frizzly heads in front of him
wavered and broke up. They did not run away, however.
Lingard pursued his course, but now with that thrill of
exultation which even a faint prospect of success inspires in a
sanguine man. He heard a shout of many voices far off, then there
was another report of a shot, and a musket ball fired at long
range spurted a tiny jet of sand between him and his wild
enemies. His next bound would have carried him into their midst
had they awaited his onset, but his uplifted arm found nothing to
strike. Black backs were leaping high or gliding horizontally
The Rescue |
